Bait-'n'-Switch: Gun-prohibition lobbyists are after
much more than AK-47s

At midnight tonight, the federal ban on
so-called "assault weapons" expires. As a constitutional moment, the
expiration is as significant for the Second Amendment as the March
3, 1801, expiration of the
Alien and Sedition Acts was for the First Amendment. These
federal laws were not found unconstitutional by any court, but the
laws expired in disgrace because our political system, as expressed
through congressional elections, determined them to be infringements
on the Bill of Rights.

As detailed by Leonard Levy in his book
Origins of the Bill of Rights, the political defeat of
the Alien and Sedition Acts resulted in a much broader, more
speech-protective understanding of the First Amendment. It is
possible that that the political defeat of the gun prohibition will
have a similar effect.

There is an important difference between the gun ban enacted in
1994 and the speech ban enacted in 1798. The proponents of the Alien
and Sedition Acts were aiming to ban particular types of speech —
but nothing more. The Acts were not the work of a lobby that wanted
to outlaw most speech, and that saw the speech restrictions of 1798
as merely "a good first step." In contrast, the primary significance
of the "assault-weapon" ban was, and still is, paving the way for
much more extensive firearms prohibition and confiscation.

PROHIBITING SELF-DEFENSE

In an April 5, 1996, column in the Washington Post, Charles
Krauthammer, who forthrightly supports total gun prohibition, wrote,
"Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic — purely
symbolic — move in that direction. Its only real justification is
not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation
of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation."

Krauthammer was right. The firearms affected by the 1994 ban are
not machine guns; those weapons have been severely regulated ever
since the National Firearms Act of 1934. They do not fire faster
than other guns, or use more powerful bullets; they are rarely used
in crime, as I detailed in
an article in the Journal of Contemporary Law.

The 1994 ban squeaked through Congress by just a single vote in
both the House and the Senate. To pass anything, proponents had to
make significant concessions, such as the now-elapsed ten-year
sunset, and removing the proposed registration requirement for
lawfully owned guns made before the ban. Likewise, the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms was denied any power to ban
additional guns. (The Clinton BATF, however, exercised such power
anyway, by administratively banning the import of hundreds of models
of guns during Clinton's second term — a violation of Clinton's
promise to wary Congressional Democrats that the 1994 law would be
the end of his administration's anti-gun efforts.)

The federal ban covered 19 types of guns by name, and about 200
other guns by generic description. Because the ban defined "assault
weapons" by cosmetic features — such as whether a gun had a bayonet
lug or a particular kind of grip — it was easy for manufacturers to
comply with the ban simply by removing the offending cosmetics.

The relatively limited ban was, however, far less than the
gun-prohibition lobbies had wanted, and far less than they still
demand. By refusing to re-enact the sunsetting 1994 ban, Congress
has accurately recognized that the real issue at stake is not just
the manufacture of some particular firearms, but the fundamental
goal of the gun-prohibition lobbies: the creation of administrative
authority to ban and confiscate firearms used for self-defense.

A BAD EXAMPLE

So-called "assault weapons" first became a major national issue on
January 17, 1989, when a drifter named Patrick Purdy attacked a
crowded school playground with a semi-automatic rifle and two
pistols. After slaughtering five children and wounding many more,
Purdy killed himself.

Purdy had a long police record for offenses such as robbery,
receiving stolen property, and the sale of illegal weapons. He even
vandalized his mother's car when she refused to give him money to
buy drugs. But instead of being sent to prison for his crimes, he
always slipped through the cracks of the system, avoided a felony
conviction, and wound up back on the street.

In addition, Purdy, a mildly retarded alcoholic, had a record of
mental disease for which he should have been committed and treated.
In April 1987, he was arrested for firing a pistol at trees near
Lake Tahoe. He told the sheriff's deputy that he had a duty to
"overthrow the suppressor." After a suicide attempt in jail, he was
described in a mental-health report as "a danger to himself and
others." The California criminal-justice system put him back on the
street again and again and again, and once he and his victims were
dead, the gun-prohibition movement incited an angry public to crack
down on law-abiding gun owners.

Bills introduced in Congress shortly after the Stockton murders
set the stage for broad prohibition of firearms. Ohio Senator Howard
Metzenbaum introduced an "assault weapon" bill empowering the
Treasury Department (which at the time was in charge of the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) to administratively ban any
self-loading gun that could accept a magazine of more than ten
rounds. A gun cannot tell the difference between an eight-round clip
and a twelve-round clip: Thus, many millions of rifles, and the
majority of handguns, would have been subject to prohibition.

NOT EXACTLY AKs

The Metzenbaum bill directly outlawed over 150 rifles (including .22
caliber) by companies including Remington, Mossberg, and Winchester,
and also banned about 75 handguns, including the Glock pistol and
the Colt 1911A. Quite obviously, a .22-caliber Winchester rifle, or
a Colt pistol invented in 1911, were not the types of guns the
public was thinking about when the gun-prohibition advocates were
shrieking about the dangers of AK-47 rifles.

But the Metzenbaum bill, like all of the "assault-weapon" bills,
was really a bait-and-switch. The AK-47 is a Soviet military rifle,
which can fire automatically. (If you press the trigger, the gun
will fire until all the ammunition has been used.) According to the
Defense Intelligence Agency, the AK-47 is a true "assault rifle": It
is carried on the battlefield, can be fired automatically, and fires
an intermediate-sized bullet. There are only a few hundred AK-47
rifles in the U.S., mostly in military museums and other
collections.

None of the "assault-weapon" bills applied to the AK-47, because
the AK-47 was already strictly regulated by the National Firearms
Act of 1934, which applies to all automatics. The "assault-weapon"
bills were about a) guns that looked like the AK-47 or other
military rifles, and b) as many other guns as could be banned,
depending on the political climate.

The gun-prohibition lobbies recognize that passing gun bans
through a legislature is very difficult, so the lobbies have been
diligent in attempting to create administrative authority for gun
bans by unelected bureaucrats.

In the House of Representatives, California Democrat Fortney
"Pete" Stark introduced legislation to prohibit every self-loading
gun that was based on a military or police design. The first
self-loading gun not based on a military design was not even
invented until the 1920s. With the exception of some specialized
hunting rifles and target guns, almost every gun is derivative of
police or military design. Low-caliber pistols such as the .22 Ruger
or Colt .25 would have been outlawed under legislation that was sold
to the public as merely controlling a few unusual "assault rifles."

In 1990, the House Judiciary Committee went even further, passing
H.R. 4225 by Rep. William Hughes of New Jersey. The bill banned the
possession or sale of any rifle that the Treasury Department
did not consider "particularly suitable" for sport. This would have
meant the prohibition of all rifles used mainly for self-defense,
and all rifles mainly used for target shooting; the Treasury
Department, in implementing an administrative prohibition on the
import of so-called "assault rifles," had declared in 1989 that the
only kinds of guns "suitable for sporting purposes" were guns that
were commonly used for hunting.

A SPORTING GIFT

And many "assault rifles" are required for competition in the top
target-shooting
competitions, such as the National Matches held every year at
Camp Perry, Ohio. To acknowledge target-shooting as a sport would
have required acknowledging that most guns labeled "assault rifles"
are sporting guns.

Politically speaking, passing gun-confiscation statutes is even
harder than passing a prohibition on the future sale of guns. But
gun-prohibition advocates did their best. After the Stockton
murders, Rep. Howard Berman (D., Calif.) introduced H.R. 669 to
confiscate 125 models of rifles, 33 different 9mm and .45 caliber
pistols, and even four shotguns.

In New York City, gun-prohibition advocates were able to pass a
confiscation bill, and the police used gun owner-registration lists
to go door to door to prosecute registered gun owners who had not
provided the city with proof that their guns had been surrendered or
moved out of the city.

Testifying in favor the New York City law, a representative from
Handgun Control, Inc., (which later changed its name to the
Brady Campaign) argued
that any gun capable of holding more than six rounds should be
considered an "assault weapon."

More recently, the Million Mom March (a subsidiary of the Brady
Campaign) has urged that all pump-action guns be prohibited. A
pump-action gun is, obviously, not a machine gun or a semi-automatic
gun. Pump-action shotguns and rifles are pervasive in American
hunting.

Currently, the gun-prohibition lobbies have united around H.R.
2083/S. 1431. This bill would expand the federal ban to cover guns
from companies such as Winchester, Remington, and Springfield, as
well the venerable M1 Garand. It bans guns that were specifically
declared to be "recreational firearms" by the 1994 gun-ban law. The
new bill gives the attorney general unilateral authority to ban any
semi-automatic rifle or shotgun that he decides is not "particularly
suitable" for sporting purposes.

The bill even bans the semi-automatic
Remington 11-87 shotgun that John Kerry received as a gift on
Labor Day in Racine, West Virginia. S. 1431, co-sponsored by Senator
Kerry, says that an "assault weapon" is any semi-automatic rifle or
shotgun with a "pistol grip." According to the bill, "(42) PISTOL
GRIP — The term 'pistol grip' means a grip, a thumbhole stock, or
any other characteristic that can function as a grip." Kerry's new
Remington has a protrusion below the stock, which a person could
grip. The protrusion is not a "pistol grip" in the ordinary meaning
of the term, but it is a "pistol grip" as defined by S. 1431.

Although Kerry's failure to wear eye and ear protection while
shooting sets a bad example on gun safety, Kerry has demonstrated
that he's a pretty good trap shooter; he obviously recognized the
Remington he received as a high-quality trap gun. Kerry has
consistently stated that while he favors "assault weapon"
prohibition, he strongly opposes banning sporting guns. Thus, John
Kerry, like many other Americans, is a victim of the gun-prohibition
lobbies' bait-and-switch.

Kerry is right when he says that nobody needs an AK-47 to go
hunting. Kerry has been duped, however, into believing that
"assault-weapon" laws are about banning the AK-47, rather than about
banning as many ordinary guns as possible, including Kerry's new
shotgun.

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